


Lay Over

by threesmallcrows



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Destructive people in destructive relationships, Drug Addiction, Exes, Explicit Sexual Content, Getting Back Together, Infidelity, M/M, This is less heavy than it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threesmallcrows/pseuds/threesmallcrows
Summary: After you guys broke up, there was a month or two where you actually thought Matt might kill himself over you. Which yeah, fucking arrogant—but what a thing.If Matt did that you’d never be able to date again. You’d tell every one of your lays about your dead ex-boyfriend and close your heart off fucking forever. Throw it into the East River to join the underwater subway lines. Fish food.
Relationships: Matt | Mail Jeevas/Mello | Mihael Keehl
Comments: 12
Kudos: 72





	1. 2008

Eventually, your expense department asks about all the stops on the west coast.

“I have family in L.A.,” you say.

()

You’re not going to clean his kitchen.

7am in Matt’s cardboard kingdom. Jet lag woke you up hours ago; it’s already mid-morning on the east coast. You’ve been a morning person, without Matt around. You’ve been different in a lot of ways.

You wanted coffee for your hangover, so you left him snoring and ruffling in the bedroom and went out to the kitchen. There was nothing in the cupboards but expired Campbell’s, old packs of Halloween candy. You look at the crumbs on the counters, the dishes in the sink. Pizza boxes growing up the walls. An ant crawls tickling over your toe, followed by another, and another; another.

It would be very easy for you to take some of his garbage out to the curb. You don’t. Matt’s space is an extension of Matt. You’re not going to worry over his messy dishes or his messy heart.

“Oh.”

Matt is fuzzy in the doorway. A slope-shouldered piece of paper.

This place is a fucking wreck, you think. How are you?

“You’re still here, man?” he says, and you take the hint and get the fuck out.

()

Things always go more-or-less the same.

You always wait by the curb, because you think the lighting in the airport terminal makes you look ugly. Matt is always late, because he’s Matt.

Every five minutes he’ll text you “5 min away :)”, and then pull up an hour later honking and waving—as if you’d fail to recognize the scarecrow silhouette, the messy mop of hair and the cigarette waving at you in the dark.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“Yeah, hi.”

“Hi, Matt.”

Matt smiles hesitantly at you, failing to help you out with your luggage. “You kinda look like an asshole, dude. It’s ninety degrees out.”

“It’s two weeks from Christmas. Fucking L.A.”

Matt’s car stinks like all of Matt’s cars. The A.C. barely works and the fan mainly pushes the warm air around. You crack a window, take your blazer off. Your armpits are pissing sweat but it’s too dark to tell, probably. Your pale reflection looks good in the windshield: new Armani, slim-fit. It feels good to be the most expensive thing in Matt’s car.

For his part, Matt doesn’t ask about your job, your health. He mainly just points out custom license plates as he drives, chain-smoking and steering one-handed, reading signs and billboard copy out loud, like you’re illiterate or maybe five years old or something. You’d forgotten what an alien he is.

Once he's shoved the two of you through six lanes of merges and onto the river of the freeway, he joins you in staring at you. Looks at your left bicep while you look at your right in the side mirror. Balanced.

Matt is the least subtle motherfucker. Like he’s a stray dog and you’re a rasher of bacon.

You look back at him and he doesn’t even look away.

“So, like… what do you wanna do?”

()

For a while, you guys managed to keep the hookups professional. Slamming one another into headboards, wringing out orgasms like murders. Matt actually fucked you like he hated you. Shit nearly made you proud. You didn’t think he’d had it in him.

“Hey. Don’t leave marks,” you snapped at him, one time, and the motherfucker bit you in the throat like a dog. 

You had to wear makeup to your meetings the next day. The mark stung like a bitch where it kept rubbing against your collar. Hot stuff.

Typically Matt runs his mouth like it’s his getaway vehicle and the cops are coming round the corner. “You like that? You gonna come already?” he’ll taunt—usually while he’s knuckle-deep in you, finger-banging you like he’s trying to pull your goddamn intestines out.

“Are you?” you shoot back, milking his dick harder.

He snorts, slaps your hand away and shoves you onto your back. When he puts his mouth on you, you clench your teeth and vow to yourself, not a peep, not a goddamn sound. Three of those long crooked fingers, now, and the flat of his tongue against the base of your dick. Matt is not very good at multitasking but he’s good enough.

He laughs at you: “Jesus christ, you’re so fucking close,” and you grit out, “Shut the fuck up,” and drag him back down by the hair.

Just a second before you come, he lets you slip free from his mouth so that you shoot all over yourself. The eagerness with which he shuffles forwards to jerk off onto your chest makes you feel a little better, at least. Matt looks stupid when he comes, all scrunched-up and red. He also fetches the towel for you, as always. Old habits.

But when you doze off for a bit, he snaps his fingers in your face and says, “Hey. You’re not sleeping here, man.”

You haul your eyes open like lifting an anchor. “Why, is your boyfriend coming over?”

“Girlfriend, actually.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

Matt smiles at you, holds the door open with his foot.

You’re actually in a bad mood, you realize on the flight home. Somewhere over Indiana you lock yourself into the lavatory and beat one out to the image of some bouncy little thing smothering Matt in her tits. You can still feel the stretch from Matt’s fingers. Fuck him,  _ fuck  _ him.

Matt wakes you up at 4am that night with a text: [that was fun :) hang out with me again when youre back]

[Wouldn’t your girlfriend mind?] you write back.

A beat. Your phone rings. For fuck’s sake.

“What?”

“Dude, like…”

Matt’s voice is raspy and warm in your ear. He sounds like he’s having a cigarette. Years of being with him has conditioned you to smell smoke, sometimes, when he’s talking.

“You know I was joking. Right?”

“How the fuck would I know that?”

“Right. Well. I was. I’m like, very single. You know. Just painfully, fucking alone.” He laughs, even though this isn’t particularly funny.

Once, a long time ago, when he was obliterated on heroin, Matt had told you that he didn’t think he could date anyone ever again if you broke up with him. You remembered the way his tears had slid suddenly down your sweater sitting out on the fire escape, startling you, like rain in July.

“I just, I dunno. Like I think you fucked me up forever,” he’d snuffled into your neck, and you’d said, “Why’re you—I’m not, fucking, going anywhere, Matt. I’m right here.”

In the dark, you close your eyes. “We’re not getting back together,” you say.

“Yeah. I know.”

“Alright.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to go.”

“Hit me up,” he says, and hangs up on you.

()

You don’t miss Matt much once you’re home. Too busy, for one, with your brutally long workdays, passing out at your desk and waking up to a neckache and the rattling of the janitorial staff.

You were coming up, you thought. You actually worked hard, unlike most of the Harvard fuckheads at the surrounding desks. No point in resenting it. They had last names that made the Times and you were a fucking Lithuanian orphan.

Usually when you do think of Matt, it’s at a corner store, at the checkout where you’d have waited for him to buy his square. There was a couple months where you’d made him go with you all the time. This was back in L.A., the fall after graduation—well, your graduation, and Matt’s flunking out of school. After a long, hot summer of sitting with him, stroking his shoulder as he stared at the wall, you’d gotten tired of the slime on his skin, the snapping and the fighting over fucking nothing. On the first of October, you drew the blinds up, heaved the window open and said, “You’re coming out with me tomorrow. You can walk or I can carry you.”

Matt looked awful and abnormal in the sunlight. People literally stared. You glared back, thunderous, and wished you could put blinders on him like a horse. Matt was upset over being looked at, and he was upset about the ice cream you bought him, digging around in it with a spoon for forty-five minutes until it was ruined and melted.

“Put it in the goddamn fridge if you’re not going to eat it,” you snapped at him, snatching the soggy carton from him to empty into the sink. “It isn’t Play-Doh. What the fuck are you looking for, anyway?”

When you turned around, Matt had put his head down on the kitchen table. He was trembling very slightly—just in the hair, like a wind-ruffled pigeon. You softened a bit, fetched him a cup of ice chips to chew on.

After a lot of coaxing, you eventually figured out that he had been afraid there would be “sharp things” in the ice cream.

“Okay,” you said. Disbelieving, but trying to keep an open mind. “Like… what? A knife?”

“I don’t know.”

“How would knives get in there?”

“I don’t  _ know.” _

You swallowed down your sigh. “No one’s out to get you,” you said, for the thousandth time. “Nothing is happening.”

“I know,” he half-shouted at you, and the next day you came home to all your guys’ cereal spread out in a flat layer over the counter.

You hesitated to use the word “psychosis” with Matt. Bringing up his depression usually resulted in him relapsing, because he couldn’t handle facing its incurability and intractability sober. Also, because he thought you were angry at him for it. He wanted to be better for you. This was the excuse he always gave when you came home and caught him puffy-faced and bloody-eyed, pooled on the couch like stagnant water.

“Fucking bullshit. You’d shoot smack until your arm fell off if I left you alone,” you said, once, and spent the next week living out of a hotel, because Matt changed the locks on you and you didn’t feel like beating the door down.

On Sunday night, you stood in the hallway, hammering the door with the heel of your hand for ten minutes straight.

“Open the goddamn door, asshole! Give me my fucking clothes, at least. I have fucking work tomorrow.”

The door opened; an armful of Matt fell out.

“Jesus fucking—christ _ , _ Matt, what the fuck?” You grabbed him by the arm, which was pimply with goosebumps. He was jumping with twitches and shivers, and his shirt was drenched with black bibs of sweat around his neck and under both armpits.

“Are you—” you said, and he rolled his eyes at you, said, “Let’s go, let’s go. I wanna fucking puke.”

The bathroom floor looked like a campsite. He’d clearly been spending a lot of time there. You sat on the edge of the tub as Matt dry-heaved like a cat producing a hairball. 

“You need to do this shit in the hospital.”

He spat into the toilet. “With what insurance?”

_ Mine,  _ you thought. Reaching down to rub the angry bones of his skinny back.

Matt was mostly too miserable to put on a good show of being pissed at you. He made you go out in the rain to buy a hot water bottle for his cramping stomach, and then whined about how cold he was until you got under the comforter with him. Under the sheets, he didn’t smell or feel amazing: sour and sharp, tacky with sweat.

“Take a shower,” you prodded.

“I don’t wanna.” He pressed closer, punishing you with his smell. “Maybe you should say something super bitchy about how I smell like a landfill and I’ll be, like, motivated to go have a bath.”

Ouch. “I’m not mean to you all the time.”

“You’re mean kinda a lot, dude.” Matt groaned when your wrist knocked his stomach on accident. “Ow, ow. Fuck.”

“How is it?”

“Uh, it sucks. Feels like I did a million sit ups.”

You kissed the back of his neck. “It’ll be over soon.”

“And then?” he said, unexpectedly.

That’s not up to me, you thought.

Four months later, Matt crashed his car into the shoulder of the 110. He was going 30 over the speed limit. Speedballing.

The hospital called you, because you were listed as his next-of-kin. Matt was like you, had no family, no people of his own.

Standing outside in the hallway, the doctor told you he’d shattered his nose and both arms because they’d gotten in the way of the deploying airbag. Physical therapy was recommended, after he’d gotten out of his casts. Did he have insurance?

Something broke between the two of you, after that. When Matt was released from hospital, you drove him home, left him sitting alone in the dark, went out clubbing with a couple of your coworkers, and ended the night pressed against a corridor wall with your tongue down someone’s throat.

You weren’t angry at Matt. You still think that’s true.

But if he was going to die on you, you’d better start getting over him.

Your relationship was in a death spiral. You spoon-fed him three meals a day and fucked someone new every night.

Four weeks later, you had a screaming fight with him because he’d shuffled up to you, interrupted your emails to beg you quietly to inject heroin into him, because he couldn’t do it himself with his broken body: the dozens of shattered bones which healed into fingers that couldn’t quite straighten, joints that ached whenever the weather changed.

After that, you started considering job offers from firms in New York.

And after that, it wasn’t very long.

()

After you guys broke up and you moved to New York, there was a month or two where you actually thought Matt might kill himself over you. Which yeah, fucking arrogant—but what a thing.

If Matt did that you’d never be able to date again. You’d tell every one of your lays about your dead ex-boyfriend and close your heart off fucking forever. Throw it into the East River to join the underwater subway lines. Fish food.

()

Matt is kneeling in front of you. His body weight makes dents in the mattress that slide you towards him. Your knees touch. His skin leaks heat. He is not a ghost. He is a warm animal, begging to be fucked.

You do, harder, just to feel that he’s alive, and Matt groans, mutters, “Oh, fuck, fuck. Oh god.”

He’s still halfway dressed: ass bared to you but wearing his dirty crew socks, the faded black sweatshirt with the sleeves stretched out from constantly pulling over his fingers. You want it off, want to see all of him. Have you gotten skinnier? Are you remembering to eat?

You pull at its shoulder with your teeth. “Take this off.”

“I feel kinda cold.”

Fucking liar. He’s sweating underneath it, and he keeps unconsciously pushing the sleeves up to air out his wrists. You shove the hem up and Matt shoves it back down.

Hiding track marks, then. What the fuck’s the point. You’ve seen enough of those for a lifetime.

You look at him and he knows you know, and you know he knows, and this goes on, forever. He is your best stranger. Sometime fucking your ex is fun and sometimes it makes you feel tired, tired.

He looks away and says hoarsely, “Dude, can you not—like, can I just wear it? Like, I don’t wanna fight.”

You relent. “Light off?”

“Okay.”

You hit the switch and manhandle him over onto his stomach, lie down on top of him and fuck him slowly like that for a while. Rubbing your chest against the pilled shirt fabric, pulling the collar down to bite at the shy knobs of his spine, the hem up to grip his waist, guiding him back and forth against you. Matt will want to feel you, like this. He always does.

You watch his swears wet the pillow. The muscles of his left arm flex against his hip as he works himself. “Still cold?” you say.

“It feels, uh, it feels better…”

Finally, he pushes up a bit against your chest, shovels the shirt quickly over his head, and then folds back under you, quiet and warm, like fresh laundry. Even in the thick dark behind the blackout curtains, you can see the marks, marching rows of rusty dots, thicker on the right arm than the left. Or maybe you don’t; maybe it’s just that you know they’re there, the way you can hear a favorite song when it’s playing too low to be heard.

Are there more? Less?

He’s here, anyway. Breathing nervously at you in the dark.

To thank him for showing you, you pretend you don’t see them. It’s hard for him to show you, probably. It’s hard for you to pretend.

Matt is craning his head at you over his own shoulder, like a baby bird wanting to be fed. So you kiss him through his orgasm, and then hold onto the back of his warm neck as you come onto his thigh. Without asking, he turns his head on the sheet to lick your sticky fingers clean. Sweet boy. You’d let him stay, if he asked nicely. It would be a bad fucking idea but you’d let him anyway.

You sleep on him for a minute, and are woken up when he shifts beneath you, elbowing you in the rib as he reaches for his discarded shirt.

“Ow.”

“Sorry,” he says, and then, “Uh, I should probably like… go.”

He puts his clothes on very slowly. Pausing generously, glancing hesitantly at you. Probably he wants you to ask.

“You should,” you say.

The bed is very large without him there. You spread out, sleep deeply. Dream of nothing at all.


	2. 2009

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Were you ever even dating Matt? You never called him your boyfriend but you paid for his rehab with your junior-year internship salary, living off cup noodles and eggs all summer.
> 
> What the two of you had was both more and less than going steady. Going unsteady, maybe.

Matt shows up in your hotel lobby, wearing a t-shirt with a hole in the shoulder, drunk out of a flask he bought freshman year, your guys’ university’s logo long ago flaked off. He has terminal nostalgia. Looking at him is like looking at a decaying windmill, or a mossy wall.

“They wouldn’t let me into the bar,” he complains.

“Dress code.”

“Whatever. Hey, buy me a drink.”

Up in your suite, he raids the minibar, offers you pieces of your own Toblerone like he’s doing you a favor. For fifteen minutes he wanders the room like a zoo animal let into the wild, patting the pillows and changing the TV channels, forgetting to close the bathroom door when he takes a piss. You’re too drunk and irritated to remind him to close it. Not like it’s anything you haven’t seen before.

He emerges waving one of the bath towels at you. “Dude, these are so nice.”

“They’re alright.”

“I think I’m going to steal one.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

“Thanks!” he says brightly. You watch him trip on nothing crossing the room, stumbling hip-first into the mattress.

“How’re you?”

He shrugs. You meant with how wasted he was, but what he adds is, “Like, I think I’m still kinda pissed at you.”

You watch him bury his face in the towel’s high pile. Rubbing his cheek slowly back and forth like a cat scratching an itch. “But like, whatever, man. I don’t wanna talk about it,” he mumbles into the fabric. “Like, if we’re not gonna sleep together, I guess I can go home.”

After you’ve come, and Matt has—whatever, his dick isn’t really working—he cozies up to you and you pull away, and he scooches forwards and so do you, and finally he turns onto his other side and falls instantly into snoring sleep.

You’re only letting him stay because he let you stay, last time. He fucking started it. He’s so drunk, anyway. You don’t want to babysit him all the way downstairs, out onto the cold curb and into an Uber. Not worth the trouble.

In the morning, you find him tucked around one of the bolsters. You watch his breath stirring the pillowcase tassels. Matt always liked to hold something in bed. When you two were still together, it was usually a pillow, because you didn’t like being held. It was too fucking sweaty with Matt wrapped around your back like the world’s lumpiest, loudest space heater.

You wonder if he still sleeps like this at home. Maybe he’s found someone new to hold.

()

You always ask. “Boyfriend?” you’ll say. “Girlfriend?” And Matt will shake his head, mumble, “Uh, no,” “Not really,” shuffling forwards to let you pull his shirt off.

You don’t know why you even bother asking. It’s just words. Plausible deniability. You’d enjoy fucking him knowing he has a boyfriend. You’re actually, seriously, not a good person. You’re not nice. You ran around on him when you were together, and now you want to be the best Matt has ever had. The heart shrapnel that the doctor couldn’t operate on.

“Are you dating anyone?” you say, and he says, “Are you?”

You shrug, just to tease him. “I might be seeing some people.”

“Then don’t talk to me,” he snipes, pushing his fingers into you. “Don’t ask me to come fetch you and hang around my house and, and, use my fucking toothbrush and then fucking cocktease me.”

“I’ll buy you a new toothbrush.”

“Yeah, you’re very rich nowadays, aren’t you?”

“I am. I’m rich and important—”

“Oh, wow—”

“—and powerful.” You fight to keep your voice steady over the warm waves that Matt’s motions are stirring in your gut. Maybe you don’t quite manage it, because Matt gives you a smug grin.

“I’m  _ very  _ hot,” you add, annoyed.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna cream, I’m so fucking impressed, Mel, seriously. Wow. Emperor of fucking nothing.”

He takes a break from bitching to fuck you for the next quarter-hour, and then picks immediately back up, flinging the crusty clean-up towel at you like you’re diseased: “Seriously, man, don’t act like you don’t know what’s up. Like don’t come around if you don’t want to get fucked.”

“Don’t pick me up, then.”

“Don’t text me about it.”

You sit up. “I can fucking go,” you threaten, and wait. Matt talks the talk but he can’t walk the walk.

He grumbles and mumbles and eventually settles down politely on one side of the mattress, leaving you half.

You’re on the verge of drifting off when he hauls you back with a mumbled “Mel?”

“Mm,” you grunt, annoyed.

“You’re cool, right?”

Fucking Matt. You could leave him hanging, pretend you’ve fallen asleep. But probably he won’t go to sleep without his, fucking, emotional-closure comfort object or whatever. You peep at him over your shoulder. He’s flat on his back, gnawing on his lip and staring at the ceiling. He is, you know, fully capable of lying there staring all night. He’s done it over less.

You take pity. Soothe a hand over the worried, snarled mind-pelt: “Yeah, Matt. I’m cool.”

“Cool,” he echoes. Happy, asleep within minutes.

()

In fact, you aren’t seeing anyone. You’re fucking people, of course. That’s all you do.

Work is sixteen hours a day of fuck and bury, fuck and bury. When you get home you don’t exactly make love.

You know guys at work who keep spreadsheets of their lays, sortable by hair color, cup size. Quality of head. You’re on some lists, probably. You always made sure to top if you were fucking some finance bro. Had to maintain one’s reputation. Chelsea guys were okay to nail you, but they always had hangups, like touching a Wall Street rat was going to give them some kind of moral STD.

You’re always waking up in someone’s house, figuring out someone’s shower. Or, conversely, kicking boys out of your apartment, bundling them down the elevator and slurring into taxicabs. You don’t take calls you don’t want to take. Bought a king-sized bed and said, no, you can’t stay over. There’s no room. Sleeping alone was lovely. No snores or kicks in the shin.

People try to get to know you. They try to hit you for brunch, for drinks, and they call you on Friday nights, like  _ hey uh, what’s up, are you still up?  _ I had fun last time, man. Did you have fun?

Sure. Fuck off. Delete message. Block, block, block.

Part of the problem was that everyone in the city did drugs constantly. Cocaine at work, molly at the clubs; poppers in the backrooms, afterwards. It made you wary. You were never fucking going to hold anyone’s hair again. If you couldn’t hang, you could fuck off, and if you could, you were still out by 3.

Your pattern is either dumb young club things who expect you to pay for their bottle service, or cagey older guys looking for you to be their mid-life crisis. You have developed a laser-accurate ability to suss out pseudo-closeted, sometimes-taken men who’ll fuck you with that fun forbidden first-time energy and then never trouble you again. You’ve slid more than one wedding ring off. One guy actually told you not to tell his wife. You couldn’t stop laughing. Like you were interested in being anybody’s mistress.

“What?” he’d said, nervous and rabbit-eyed, pants still around his ankles. Wringing his hands until you said, “I fucking won’t, alright? Are you going now?”

Lately, you’ve been eyeing a guy at work. This Scottish bastard, Laird, whose deal-making and boardroom machinations make you horny. He’s eight years older than you and a link or three higher on the corporate chain, well-known, well-liked. A pretty upright guy, for what counts as upright in this ratfuck nest of a company.

But you’ve seen the way he fucks founders and companies when they aren’t looking, the corporate equivalent of taking the condom off without telling. He knows how to fuck. Promising. And the ring on his finger means he isn’t going to try to fucking make love or ask you out to dinner, which really, is all you’re fucking asking for.

It’s not that Matt’s whole clusterfuck burned you on dating. You want to be very fucking clear on that. You’re just taking a break from the bullshit. 

Anyway, it’s gotten blurry over time. Were you ever even dating Matt? You know you fucked other people throughout, and Matt certainly could’ve. You guys didn’t discuss it. Nobody sat anybody down to have a talk. With Matt it was always just talking in circles, “chilling”, hanging out in dorm rooms and then one off-campus apartment after another. Hanging out in your bedroom and then in your arms. Matt never asked you to stick around; you were just too young and stupid to cut him off after you saw the track marks for the first time. Your mistake.

You never called him your boyfriend but you paid for his rehab with your junior-year internship salary, living off cup noodles and eggs all summer.

What the two of you had was both more and less than going steady. Going unsteady, maybe.

Last time you were out west, Matt fucked you on the floor and then told you that he’d been on a date earlier.

“But, like, don’t worry. It fucking sucked,” he reassured. “Like I guess I maybe took a Klonopin or something first, and I almost fell asleep.”

“Fucking seriously?”

“Maybe two.”

“Don’t pregame your dates.”

“I was nervous.”

“Do some yoga,” you said distractedly. Thinking,  _ don’t worry?  _ What the fuck?

Knuckles knock your desk. You startle slightly. Laird, rapping it as he walks past. “Wake up, kid. War room. Floor 27.” You glance at your inbox. Email was only sent out two minutes ago. Asshole.

You trail him to the elevator, scoping his ass through his slacks, his ring winking at you. Word is that Laird’s one of the few guys who hasn’t slept with one of his underlings. Hasn’t so much as harassed his secretary. Well, you always liked a project. You’re gonna fuck up this guy’s life.

()

Winter treats you well. After several months of you making relentless HR-unapproved passes, Laird finally gropes you in the men’s room at the company holiday party, then asks to do a rail of coke off your ass. Six days later, you’re in L.A. in time for Christmas eve, dry-humping Matt on his back on top of your guys’ old college mattress.

Evidently Matt has had himself a little early present. He is slack-limbed and syrupy and harder than hell. He drools onto your hand when you put it over his mouth to shut him up. Licks your palm like a kitten.

Matt can be darling when he’s the right kind of high. You make him come just by running your nails lightly over him, tracing lines around his neck and his spine and the cleft of his ass until he tightens, jerks in your arms and spatters his breath all over your neck.

“Oh, fuck, Matt.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry. It felt so good.”

“Fucking messy bitch.”

“Sorry. I’ll, lemme—” Unsteadily Matt unsticks himself from you, bends over to lick at the mess on your stomach.

“Yeah,” you say roughly. Fucking Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. “Clean it off.” Your dick is grazing the side of his face, so you slap his cheek a little with it. “Hey. This too.”

In a moment he has you on his tongue. Matt gives the laziest, most teasing head when he’s plastered. Like he’s having a fairground lollipop. When he’s finally gotten you close, you grunt, “Can I—will you—” and he seems to intuit what you mean from your hands clawed in his hair, lets you pull his face into your hip and pour yourself down his throat.

“Oh, fuck. Oh my fucking god.”

You fall back against the headboard. Soul drained out. You feel Matt’s head settle on your outstretched leg. One cold earring pricking the skin of your thigh. His breath stirs against your still-twitching cock.

“Was it good?”

It might’ve been the third or fourth time he asked it. You force yourself out of your coma to mumble, “Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, Matt.” You reach down tiredly to ruffle his hair. “Come up here. Come. Your head is heavy as fuck.”

He settles obediently on the pillow next to you. Pale as Snow White, still as Aurora. Clear of your orgasm haze, you can’t stop yourself from noticing how skinny he’s gotten. His skin looks thin. Like overripe fruit.

Arms had been clear. Between the toes, then?

You turn the light off to stop yourself from looking. He could do his fucking thing and you could do yours, and you guys could keep your hands out of one another’s hair, and shit would be unbothered, it would be fine. You weren’t each other’s problem. Not anymore.

In the dark, you listen to Matt huffing slowly like he’s run a marathon.

“Hey.”

“Mm.”

“You’re just going to sleep, right? You’re not...” Nodding, you mean.

“No.” Wheezy breath. “I did earlier. A little bit. I think I’m just tired now.”

You shut your eyes. “Are you sure?”

He kisses you chastely on your cheek. Childish, like handing your crush a valentine. “Don’t worry about me, dude,” he says. “Happy Christmas.”

()

Sunrise wakes you up through Matt’s crooked blinds. The hearty snoring under the covers assures you you’re good to go out for a run. You know the neighborhood well; Matt’s current place is only a few miles from where you used to live together. After jogging aimlessly for a bit, you catch sight of Washington Park and loop onto your old route, taking the trail westwards over the freeway. In half an hour, you’re descending the street towards your old house.

The slope pushes an untrimmed toenail relentlessly into your shoe’s toebox. You wince. You used to like this part of the run; the easy finish, rolling to a stop at the bottom of the hill. It’s all downhill from here. You guys had argued about what that meant, whether it was meant to be a positive or a negative. You thought cup half-full, Matt half-empty.

The apartment building is as shitty as you remember. They still haven’t replaced the missing “Y” in “Elysium” out front. You push through the creaky front door. Same old mailroom, same linoleum.

There’s your guys’ mailbox, now labeled “H. LEE”. There was the blackened bannister Matt fell and chipped his tooth on, and there was the step he couldn’t get his foot over.

“Lift your fucking leg, fucking christ. Come on. Lift.”

“I love you.”

“Move. Fucking  _ move _ your leg up, Matt. I can’t fucking carry you.” 

“‘d you hear me? I love you, Mel.”

Wet fingers scrabbled at your cheek. Matt was bleeding so fucking much. Fucking hell, had he knocked his goddamn tooth out?

Matt was tilting. You gave up, dropped him down onto the step. Your coat was strangling you with sweat, so you tore it off, pulling so hard you felt the shoulder seam tear. Fucking cheap piece of shit.

Flinging it down on the floor, you demanded, “Let me see. Open.”

Matt opened. His mouth was very wet and his eyes very black. Blood curtained over the front teeth.

“I love you, man.”

“What’d you take?”

“Nothing.”

“What did you fucking take, you junkie piece of shit?”

“I’unno.” He touched his mouth gingerly, smearing the blood on his upper lip. “Ow. It hurts.”

You shut your eyes. “You hit your goddamn face off the railing,” you pointed out, and went up the stairs.

You walked up the two flights and unlocked the front door, and went in, leaving the lights off, sat on the bed for a few minutes, and then went back out the door and down the stairs again.

Matt was sitting on the bottom step still, his head tilted against the wall, like a little kid. He was holding your jacket in his lap.

“Matt.”

“Mel? Where’d you go?”

I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

“Where were you?”

A door slams somewhere upstairs, breaking you out of your zone-out. A woman rattles down the stairs in exercise clothes, giving you a bit of a look. You follow her out the door.

The day is going to be warm. You’re already uncomfortably hot, in your overthick joggers, your east coast wardrobe. Foreign to the place you once called home.

Ahead of you, the long upwards slope steams in the sun.


	3. 2010—11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think I wanted you to get better and you didn’t give a fuck.”

Stuck in bumper-to-bumper, Matt starts picking at you.

“You look like such a prick,” he says. “You look like you have wet dreams about yachts.”

He’s staring fixedly at the bumper of the pickup in front, reflexively pushing the gearshift around so the car doesn’t stall. Matt tried to teach you to drive a manual before, but you’d rather watch him do it. He’s in his element on the road. Finally part of one of the machines he likes so much.

Matt is still running his mouth: “You look like you’re trying out keto but you still do coke on the weekends. Like, maybe you’ve ‘heard good things’ about Bitcoin but, like, you don’t even know what the blockchain is.”

“I know what blockchain is.”

“Oh, uh-huh?”

You shrug. “Cryptography and shit.”

Matt snorts at you, disapproving.

“Nobody dresses like that on a fucking 6-hour airplane ride.”

“They do in business class.”

“You look like a Gordon Gekko-worshiping Wall Street douchebag.”

“Maybe I am,” you say.

The moonlight falls hard in Matt’s lap. He’s already half-hard, tenting in his sweatpants. Figures. He never notices your outfit unless he wants to get into it.

“Uh, um,” he says when you reach over to cup him, and you say, “Focus on the road, Matt, for fuck’s sake.”

You play with him for half a mile or so before taking mercy and saying, “Pull your seat back.”

It’s uncomfortable in Matt’s lap: propped on your forearms, crowded between his stomach and the steering wheel. The gearshift knocking against your ribs periodically. You’re not doing your finest work. You never understood the appeal of road head. Potholes and teeth seemed like a bad combination.

Nevertheless, your 6/10 blowjob is pushing little groans out of Matt. He rests one forearm on your back like it’s a dining room table, fingers fiddling with your collar.

“Do you wanna take your shirt off, dude?”

“Why, so you can stare at my back?”

“So? You have a hot back.”

“What’s hot about a back?”

“I dunno. I like your shoulderblades.”

Fucking ridiculous. You sit up to pull your shirt off. Matt is flushed chest-to-scalp, stunned and stupid-looking.

“How’s the traffic?” you ask him.

“Oh, total shit. Backed up to hell for, uh, let’s say the next ten to fifteen?”

Ambitious. “Don’t brake so hard. I don’t want you to shove your dick into my brains.”

“Jesus, Mel.”

He repeats that one a couple more times, and then goes quiet, only interrupting once to ask, “Would you, like, shoot me to death if I took a video?”

“Matt.”

“Uh-huh?”

“I will kill you.”

“Okay, yeah. I’m sorry.”

()

You’re busy, busy. You get promoted, and are rewarded with a pay bump, a three day rager, and a half-dozen new accounts to handle, hungover, the next Monday. You don’t have time to layover in L.A. anymore. You start sending dick pics to Matt, because he starts sending them to you; sort of generally sexting you, wafting his horny vibes your way on random Wednesday afternoons. You feel bad that he’s lonely. Whatever.

You slip up. One harried afternoon, locked in the men’s room between meetings with your cock in your fist, you accidentally text the photo to Laird. He’s become a bit of a problem. He is not content to hook up in unused conference rooms and on top of sit-stand desks; he keeps taking you out to dinners at very nice places, the kind of places you yourself can never get reservations to. Also, he’s sort of not married. He only wears his ring because his wife won’t grant him a divorce, even though they haven’t lived together in nearly a decade. She is still, he tells you, holding out hope that he’ll turn out to be straight.

This is the kind of thing he’ll just tell you to your face over dinner, not even two glasses of wine in. Laird is a very direct communicator.

Cranky and caught out, you told him he shouldn’t wear a ring then, that it was misleading, and he laughs and asks if that’s your type.

“Maybe it is,” you said, confrontational. He only looked at you, said, “That’s one way to live.”

In the evening, he drops by your desk, taps his phone on it and says, “I guess that wasn’t for me.”

Your hackles rise immediately. “Is it a problem?”

“No,” he says mildly, and then backstabs you with, “But I wouldn’t mind it if we only saw each other.”

You aren’t sure what expression you’re wearing. It might be bloody murder, because he glances at you and lays a hand over yours like calming a rabid animal. “Mello. You can say no.”

“And then what?”

“Then we talk more about it.”

Unbidden, you think: Matt would’ve backed down. Resentful. Things were easy with Matt.

“Think about it,” he says, and you roll your eyes, shouldering past him without a goodbye. You think you’re about done with this.

()

Laird’s bullshit is stressing you out. You’re glad to finally make an escape out to California. But then, as soon as you land and get signal, Matt texts you that you can’t come over, because there’s somebody at his house.

[Girl?]

[nah :)]

For fuck’s sake. [We don’t need to see each other], you write back, stabbing the screen so hard you nearly drop your phone.

[no dude were still hanging out. is your hotel nice?]

It’s pretty nice. You get treated better since your promotion. Matt wanders into the lobby like a foundling duckling, out-of-place in his jeans and a faded jumper.

“How come they always splash out on you?” he complains. “Motel 6 has beds, too.”

“Raise your standards, you cheap fuck.”

“Well excuse me for not having anyone around to—to spoil me.” He’d stuttered because you got a fist in his hair and started dragging him into the shower, which is enormous and has one of those ledges for disabled people to sit on. Convenient and multi-purpose. That’s one thing you can’t stand anymore: a cheap bathroom. You need room to work.

You put Matt on his elbows on that ledge and finger him until he’s shoving backwards onto your hand, and then you take him against the wall, observing over his shoulder the way his cock smears and dirties the glass.

He’s very tight; whoever’s taken your place at his place certainly hasn't done the job. Good. You don’t mind admitting that you feel a little competitive over him. Matt seems to be enjoying it, anyway.

“Are you fucking drinking the shower water?”

“I’m staying hydrated,” he pants. “This is, like, a lot of exercise.”

“You’re not even doing anything.”

Later, on the bed, you try to get him to ride you, but he’s truly atrocious at it.

“Don’t laugh at me, man. Don’t make fun. I know I don’t have like, a fucking core or whatever. Abs.”

“Yeah,” you say, pushing around his pale, soft stomach. Squishy.

“Ow. My stomach is literally cramping. Can I stop?”

“Alright, alright. Let’s switch before you fucking crush me.”

“Oh, thank god, cool. Thanks.”

“What’re you fucking smiling about?” you ask as he lies back, spreading out with a shit-eating grin.

“That you gave me a break.”

Yeah, right. This is Matt’s favorite, you think, swinging your leg over his hip and settling onto his lap. He practically drools when you reach back for his dick and angle it in, wincing a little at the stretch.

You don’t move much at first, just grind on him, watching his face go beet red and slapping away his hands whenever he tries to cup your ass.

“Stop distracting.”

“Uh, sorry. How—dude, how do you do that? What’re you, like, spelling letters or something?”

“I’m not a high-schooler who reads Cosmo. I’m just flexible. And I have a good core.” Matt picks up on the hint, moves his hands to brush your abs, which produces a vague tickling sensation that you experience in the roof of your mouth and at the base of your dick. Maneuvering his left hand onto you—“Close. Close your hand, goddamnit, make a fist”—you bounce a little, feeling yourself thrust into his hand as you ride him. “Okay. Don’t come.”

“I dunno if that’s super up to me.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“How about you don’t come,” he says, jerking a little at your cock. Fucking brat. You lean forwards, put your hands around his throat.

“You still do this?”

“Uh, um. Maybe.”

“You do this with him?”

“Nah, we mainly just—stick to more, y’know, vanilla—”

What a waste. Matt is thrusting unevenly into you now, panting against your fingers as you take and give him air, now and again hooking a thumb into his slack lip. You like to run your finger against his teeth: feeling that he could bite, knowing that he won’t.

He pulls his mouth back from your finger. “Can we do like this?” he says, pushing you over onto your back. “I wanna make out with you.”

“Make out,” you mock. “Like we’re sixteen.”

“You’re so mean,” Matt grumbles, hooking a hand around the back of your right knee and pressing your leg up against the mattress so suddenly that you feel something in your hip shift.

“Fuck, ow, asshole. I’m not a fucking sex doll.”

“Sorry. You good?”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine.”

“I was saying, do you have to be a dick about everything?”

“It gets you off, so what’re you complaining for? Fucking let go of my leg already, this isn’t yoga in the park.” When he does, you cross your ankles behind the small of his back, pushing him down onto you. You always feel it deeper, like this. Something about his weight bearing down on you, the narrowing, sweaty cave of air between your chests.

Maybe you’re a little flushed. Matt has an annoying smile on his face. “Fucking boring-ass vanilla, right?” he says, and you says, “Can we kiss so you can shut up?”

You tell him as he’s coming that you’re seeing someone, too. Just to piss him off. “So fucking petty,” Matt complains, voice tightening as he jerks himself off onto the sheet, and you say, “Don’t dish it if you can’t take it.”

Later when you’re both cleaned up, he nudges you and says, “Hey, show me your guy.”

“Show me yours.”

You swap phones. Matt’s is open to a selfie of him and this buff college-looking kid, messing around in a supermarket somewhere. The guy doesn’t look anything like you at all. Would it be worse or better if he did?

“Wow,” says Matt, staring at your phone.

“What?”

“Nothing, dude. How old is he? Like forty?”

“He’s thirty-five,” you snap. “How old is _he?”_

“Twenty-two.”

“Cradle-snatcher.”

“Dad-fucker. So you dated me ‘cause I’m older, huh?”

“You’re three months older, Matt.”

“I thought I was younger than you for like forever.”

“Don’t call me old-looking.”

“I’m not. I just thought—you seemed like you knew everything, you know. Like you had your shit together.”

It’s pleasing when Matt falls for your illusions. He believes just enough of your bullshit for you to keep him around. Turns out you can coast off of one person thinking you’re cool for a pretty long time. It’s a different kind of high.

Matt slaps your phone onto your stomach. “So like. How serious is your thing?”

You snort, shake your head. “How serious is yours?”

“I dunno. It might be, getting kind of.”

“Okay,” you say coldly. You don’t want to talk about this, but Matt presses on, “Are we still gonna hang out?”

“I can if you can.”

“No, man, like... _Hang out_ hang out.” Propping himself up on one elbow, he reaches across you to dig a cigarette pack out of his jacket pocket. Around a mouthful of smoke, he says, “I mean, I think I could be around you without, like, necessarily having to fuck you.”

“I thought you were pissed at me.”

“Nah. I think I just miss you.”

Five years ago you would’ve thought Matt was uncool for saying it. Now you think it’s probably you who’s uncool, for not being able to.

I miss you, too.

“I don’t think we should hang out,” you say, instead, and wait with your hand in the trap, your heart in your throat. Seeing if it’ll snap shut and kill you.

After a minute, Matt says slowly, “Yeah. Yeah, I guess not.” He doesn’t even sound that upset.

You kick him out of your hotel room, and sleep by yourself.

()

You don’t see him for a while, after that.

()

The next time you do, you’re six months deep into your own relationship.

Things were going—okay. In the beginning you wanted to fuck other people like wanting to scratch an itch. Wanting like needing. But it turns out itches itch more when you scratch them. If you ignore them for long enough, they get better.

It’s still hard for you, at parties and things. He jokes that he’ll give you more work, so you won’t have time to go out.

“So should I tell HR you’re gonna fire me if I don’t fuck you?” you say, and he winks at you, says, “I’m just managing you.”

Laird is easy to talk to. He has this trick where he offers his own secrets upfront, as collateral, so that you feel obliged to open up, too. It’s lethal in business and pleasure. He tells you about coming out in the middle of his marriage to a woman he still loves, and you tell him about coming out in a state-run Catholic boy’s school. You tell him about the little divot above the bone of your right wrist, which you said to Matt happened from falling off your bike, but actually came from being zip-tied to your chair in the fifth grade and fighting for hours to get out, bleeding all over the floor. You told him how mad you’d been when your teacher walked in in the morning, cut you loose and made you clean it. How good it felt to finally snap at fifteen, stab a kid in the arm with a pencil as he held you up in the hallway, asking if you’d enjoy sucking his dick.

“Jesus. What happened to him?”

“He was alright. They sent him to hospital but they couldn’t get the lead out. You could see it inside his arm, under the skin. It’s still there, probably.”

“And what happened to you?”

“I got expelled.”

Laird thinks you have vulnerability issues. He goes to therapy, so he thinks he knows everything. For weeks, he listens to you vacillate between protectively defending Matt and making him out to be the worst scumbag on earth, and then tells you he thinks you should try to be friends with him.

“Does your wife want to be friends?” you snipe, and he says he wishes she would, which makes you feel bad.

After a while, you add, “What if I want to fuck him?”

He shrugs. “But are you going to?”

()

Matt’s door is unlocked. His sink is full and his TV is playing cartoons; his junk is on the coffee table.

You pick up a needle. The tip looks bloody, unclean. You imagine what it would be like to stick it into your arm a dozen times a week.

“Matt? It’s me.” The house says heavy binge; he’ll be somewhere on the ground floor. Can’t handle stairs high. You think of his chipped front tooth, and speed up your search.

You find him in the handkerchief-sized backyard, which you have never seen him use. He’s holding a plastic water bottle and staring at a limp potted palm in the corner.

“What’re you doing?”

“I think it’s dead. I think I killed it.”

“What? Whose plant is that?”

“Mine. I thought I could try taking care of it.” He turns to look at you, and you can see the high in his eyes from all the way through the screen door. “D’you think I should try watering it?”

The plant looks pretty fucking dead. “Couldn’t hurt,” you say.

Matt’s mouth twists. “Whatever,” he says, flinging the bottle onto the concrete. He brushes past you brusquely and flops onto the couch. The light from the TV catches and glitters on all the junk on the table.

“Don’t,” he warns when you turn on the light in the kitchen.

“Don’t what?”

“Stop fucking doing everything for me all the time.”

“I haven’t even seen you for half a year.”

“I don’t need you to wash my fucking dishes.”

“Then you fucking wash them,” you snap. Fuck this. You want to leave, but at the same time recognize that you’ll regret leaving him like this, so you go back out into the backyard to take a breather. Crouching, you take a good look at the plant. It’s definitely dead, spider-webbed and crisped, but you fetch the bottle from the floor, anyway, and pour some of it in. Maybe there’s something still alive down there, below the surface. You touch the soil. It’s cool now, wet. Doesn’t feel bad.

Fingers dip into your shirt collar.

“Mel. M’sorry.”

“Okay.”

“I am. I’m happy you’re here.”

You straighten up; his hand stays on your back. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” he says, and then you feel the chilly tip of his nose brushing your neck.

“Aren’t you still with that guy?”

“Uh-huh, yeah.” But Matt keeps nuzzling you, until you jerk your head to the side, say, “Matt.” Then he adds, “It’s fine, it’s, like. An open thing, or whatever.”

You don’t understand. “Open?” you repeated stupidly.

“Yeah. He won’t mind.” He has both hands inside your shirt now, tickling up your side. “Come inside, dude. Come in with me. It’s cold.”

Something is wrong, you want to say. You’ve already done this, with me. I slept around on you and didn’t you hate it, didn’t it make you miserable? Didn’t you crash your car on freeways, didn’t you overdose?

They had to restart your heart with electricity.

Why would you settle for this again?

“Mel?”

“I can’t,” you say rigidly.

“Why not?”

“I’m with—I’m seeing someone. I just. Can’t.”

“Oh,” he says. After a moment, he adds, “Why’d you come here, then?”

()

“Did you visit?”

“Yeah.”

“How was it?”

“I don’t know. Not—good. He’s getting really fucked up again. Fuck. I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do.”

Laird sighs. “Come home,” he says.

()

The last time, you guys go out for dinner.

It is you and him and his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s friends piled around one too-small table at an upscale Asian joint. The music is very loud. You don’t say much and neither does he. He is dressed like a stranger, in clothes like his boyfriend’s clothes. He tilts his head against one mirrored wall, smiles wanly at you.

Matt’s guy turned out to be nice. Normal. He shook your hand, asked after your flight and your job when Matt had never asked after either. Matt had no bruises on his face; he didn’t flinch from his lover’s hands. Were you disappointed?

The group wanders from bar to bar to club to club. You let yourself drift apart on the dance floor, looking around, thinking: anybody, anybody. For a while you kiss a boy against a sweaty corridor wall. When he reaches under your shirt, you retreat into the bathroom, lock yourself into a stall and fiddle with your phone. The battery is low and the sharp blue light hurts your eyes. You look at Laird’s last text message to you, asking you to grab peanut butter from the corner store. You should tell him what you did. The thought of confessing makes you want to go back out, find that boy again and finish what you started. What’s broken is broken.

No, god, you shouldn’t fucking do that. Fuck’s sake. You dig your fingers into your eyes. You feel like you need to wake up.

When the door bangs open, you draw your feet up like a child. You can tell from the sound of the puking in the next stall that it’s Matt.

“God, Matt.”

“M’fine, I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not. Are you starting?” Matt must nod, because his boyfriend adds, “How bad is it?”

“Fuckin’ sucks.”

“You didn’t have anything today?”

“No. Yesterday, uh. Last night or something.”

“Jesus christ. Why’re you doing this to yourself? Is it because of him?”

“Mm. I don’t wanna… don’t want him—” The sentence cuts off in more retching.

You’ve seen him throw up until he bleeds. Small vessels in his eye bursting from the pressure. You panicked the first time it happened, insisted on driving him to hospital even though he said he was fine. Eventually you started listening to him. You stopped panicking over a lot of things.

“He’s not looking, babe. I promise. I saw him making out with some kid outside, okay? He probably left already. Here.” Crinkle of leather, then plastic. “You can have some of mine.” Matt grunts wordlessly. His boyfriend says reassuringly, “Just a little. Take the edge off.”

“No.”

“You’re really sick.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Alright. I’m just worried about you.”

“... what is it?”

“Powerball.”

“Eric’s?”

“No. Raf’s shit.”

Matt breathes in noisily. You can picture the animal shine in his eyes, that glazed, teary look they got whenever he was raw with need. His breath coming quick and the pats of pink high on his cheeks. He was sluttier for his fucking fix than he ever was for you.

You bite the knuckles of your right hand. You are not going to fucking beat down the stall door or slap the powder out of his hands. No more. You’re so sick and fucking tired of it.

Moments like this, you hate him. You hate that he makes you a bad person for not saving him. You fear that you and him are worse off for knowing one another. Two dogs in people-clothing, putting on a show nobody is laughing at.

The shoes on the floor shuffle closer. Not ten seconds later, there comes a sharp sniff.

“Better?”

“Fuck, I think so.” Matt sniffles. “God. Thank you.”

You close your eyes. You know how Matt likes to thank people. He was never sweeter than when he’d had his fix.

When you hear the clink of a belt buckle, you unlock the stall door, and go home.

()

Two months later, on the sidewalk a block from your office, you get a call from a 310 number. Cedars-Sinai emergency, a woman says. Was this Mihael Keehl? 

She asks if you know Matthew Jeevas, and you tell her she has the wrong number.

()

Matt phones a few days later. You pick up but don’t say anything. The sound of your breathing is the sound of nothing left to say.

Eventually he says, “Where are you?”

“Manhattan. Where I live.”

“I woke up by myself. I didn’t know where I was.”

“Honestly, Matt, it’s not really my problem.”

This starts him snivelling. In between sniffles, he rants about how hard his life is, how you don’t understand.

“I’m fucking trying. I wanna get better.”

“I don’t think so,” you interrupt. “I think I wanted you to get better and you didn’t give a fuck. Take me off your emergency contact.”

Matt gasps like you’ve stabbed him. “I don’t, I can’t. I don’t know anyone else. I don’t have anyone.”

You’ve never heard him cry like this before. He always used to hide from you, in the bathroom or in the car with his cigarettes. Taking “smoke breaks” and using up the tissues in the console. It hurts to hear. It’s hard to stand.

“I don’t wanna die,” he says.

You say, “Me being there is not going to save you.”

()

For the next three days, your phone rings at all hours.

After that, it doesn’t ring at all.

()

9/04/2011 11:29 PM _—_ _Hey, motherfucker. Pick up._

9/04/2011 3:41 AM _— You selfish piece of shit. You fucking left me. You abandoned—_

9/05/2011 5:38 AM — _Did you even care about me?_

9/06/2011 4:56 PM — _Please pick up._

9/06/2011 — MISSED CALLS (4)

()

10/29/2011 4:07 AM

_Yeah, so. I guess you don’t wanna talk anymore._

_I miss you. Fucking wish I didn’t._

_Yeah. I hope it goes away soon. I hope it does._


	4. December 21—22 2012

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I got 5150’d. Involuntary psychiatric hold. Like what they did to Britney Spears.”

On a Friday evening, you get an email that there’s a visitor waiting for you downstairs.

You don’t recognize him at first, even though he’s folded up in the far corner of the lobby on a Gameboy, one of his prototypical poses. It’s because he’s dyed his hair black. This makes a shocking amount of difference.

You get all the way up to him, and he hits you with the same old cracked-glass eyes.

“Matt,” you say, disbelieving.

“Hey,” he says. “D’you have a jacket or something I can borrow? My dick is freezing off.”

()

When he takes his (borrowed) coat off in your apartment, you see he’s tattooed black bars up the insides of both arms, like racing stripes on a car. Unexpected. Tattoos were your thing, not his. He always said he was afraid of the pain.

You want to push his sleeves up, see how far up they go.

Utterly inappropriate. You guys haven’t spoken in over a year.

Thawed out, Matt pads around like a dog let out of its carrier. Leaning his hip here-and-there against your apartment.

“Is that couch comfy?” he asks, pointing. “It looks, I dunno. Hard and expensive.”

“It was expensive.”

He sits, frowns at you. “Like concrete.”

He calls your wall art confusing and your bathroom “oppressively clean, man, seriously. I feel like I’m shitting in an Apple store or something.” Then he goes into your kitchen and starts rattling around your nice Japanese knives and Le Creuset pans with a startling authority.

“Are you hungry? I can make something for you or whatever.”

To your knowledge, Matt has never cooked anything in his life without the aid of a microwave. The sight of him rinsing vegetables in your sink is totally disorienting.

“They said it’d help if I learned how to cook,” he explains, unprompted. “Like if I could see where stuff was coming from.”

“Who said?”

“A shrink. Shrinks, I guess. I got 5150’d.”

“Fifty-what?”

“Involuntary psychiatric hold. Like what they did to Britney Spears.”

“I’m not familiar.”

“She shaved her head, dude.”

He’s not looking at you. Head hung over a carrot as he cuts it slowly into uneven pieces.

“I guess I didn’t drink anything for a couple days and they thought I was trying to kill myself or whatever. Like, I wasn’t? But I could’ve technically died, so?” He shrugs. “Basically they take all your stuff away and put you in a hospital gown, and then you have to sit in a room with a bunch of crazy people for 72 hours. And you’re hella mad about it until you realize you’re also a fucking crazy person. Shit blows.”

“You’re not crazy.”

“But I am, Mel. I think people are trying to hurt me, but it’s just me. D’you have a pan, like this big?” he says, holding his hands apart.

You look at his unstraight fingers. They never had healed properly, after he’d smashed them open against the asphalt of the carpool lane. It’s tempting to snatch the knife out of his hand, push him away from the range burners. Tuck him away in a soft room somewhere.

You hand him a cast-iron, and he says, “Cool, thanks.”

The house fills up with smells of tomatoes and roasting chicken. When the timer on the stove goes off, he makes plates for both of you, and then watches you eat while he pushes food from one side of his plate to the other.

“This is good.”

“It’s salty.”

He’s barely even touched it. “It’s fine,” you say. “You should eat.”

“I’m not that hungry.”

An alarm goes off on his phone. “Oh,” Matt says flatly. He goes over to his backpack and digs out two pill bottles, and then goes into your bathroom and locks himself inside.

You give it ten minutes, and then go over and knock on the door.

“Hey. Can I come in?”

The door clicks open. Matt is sitting on the toilet, staring dead-eyed at the faded print of the ocean you have on your wall. Both bottles are on the counter. LEXAPRO 10MG, reads the label of one.

He nods at the picture. “Is that Santa Monica?”

“It’s a beach in Mexico.”

“Cool.”

He looks so fucking exhausted. “It’s fine if you’re not hungry,” you say.

“But I wanna be. Like, I just worked for a whole fucking hour, and now I can’t even eat because I have to take these shitty fucking pills that make me feel fucking full all the time. I learned how to cook. I _did_ all the shit they told me to do.”

You’re not sure what to say to this. “It’s good,” you say haltingly. “I mean, you seem like you’re doing—better.”

“Yeah, but I don’t fucking feel better. If I don’t feel better, what’s the fucking point?”

“You will. It just takes time.”

“I just wanna know a date when things are gonna suck less. It can be thirty years from now, man. Whatever.”

()

After sequestering his uneaten dinner in the fridge, you convince him to go outside with you and walk around for a bit. You’re hoping the exercise will bring his appetite up, but not three blocks away, a squall starts.

“Whoah,” he says, bug-eyed. “Is it fucking snowing?”

“What the fuck else would it be?”

“I’ve never seen it snow before.”

This seems impossible to you, the same way it seemed impossible to Matt that you had never seen the ocean, back when you first moved to L.A. 

“It’s really wet.”

“There’s wet snow and there’s dry snow.” You watch him licking flakes off his lip, sticking his tongue out like they do in the movies. “Matt. I’m sorry that—you had to go through that.”

“Huh?”

“The fifty, uh—”

“Fifty-one-fifty.”

“—going to hospital. Yeah. That.”

He blinks at you. “I really wasn’t trying to kill myself. You get that. Right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay. Thanks. Can we go back inside? It’s cold as shit out here.”

He showers first, separately, emerges chastely wrapped in one of your towels. Water runs down the lanes of his tattoos like cars down a freeway.

“Did they take a long time?”

“For-fucking-ever, oh my god. I thought I was gonna pass out.”

To make shooting up harder, you realize. Hard to find the veins beneath the ink. You’re very proud. “You’re staying over?” you ask.

Matt keeps you up with his noise: first rapid-fire keyboard-clacking, and then general blundering about. You drift in and out of sleep as he goes around hitting all the creaky spots on the floorboard, running the tap, opening and shutting the fridge door.

Shuffling of socked feet, outside your open door. You crack an eye.

“Sorry, man. Did I wake you up?”

“Mm. You’re still not asleep?”

“Jet lag.” He hesitates, then adds, “Also your couch is seriously really hard.”

You peel back a corner of the comforter, maybe a little too fast. You hadn’t been sure how angry he still was with you.

He slides in, saying simultaneously, “But I don’t wanna—like, can we not do anything?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes, Matt. I’m going to sleep.”

“Cool. Night, dude.”

()

You wake up with Matt’s forehead sweating onto your back, so you turn around and hold him.

You’re trying to remember the last time the two of you managed this. Might’ve been all the way back in college. Before Matt started waking up at six in the evening every day; before you got too busy to wait around for him. He slept later and later and you woke earlier and earlier. In the end it was like the two of you only met in bed to fuck.

It took so many fucking years to make your way back.

Matt’s eyelashes scrape your chest.

“Is this okay?”

“Is this okay,” he mocks into your collarbone.

“What?” you snap, relieved. “You said you didn’t want to do anything. I don’t know if you’re broken up or what.”

“I didn’t wanna do anything because my dick wasn’t working.”

“Oh.”

“It’s still not,” he adds cheerfully. “But we could make out, though.”

You guys do that for a while, powering past each other’s morning breath. Matt snarls up your hair and you push the skin of his sides around. Matt’s dick might be malfunctioning, but yours is working overtime. Stiff as a mailbox flag, outgoing message: I missed you.

Matt’s knee knocks innocently between your legs. “Yo,” he says. “Why’d you break up?”

You balk. “Why’d you?”

“‘Cause people like me less when I’m sober.”

“Fuck those people.”

“Knew you’d say that.” He yawns into your neck. “Stop avoiding the question, dude.”

You hesitate. You want to lie to him, because the truth was so idiotic and embarassing. You don’t really even understand why you fucked things with Laird. If you were trying to burn your bridges from the start, or if it just ended up that way. The inertia of your character.

It happened over a nice dinner at Marlowe. At that point, you’d been anticipating it for days. When you sat down your stomach was already full of dread.

Laird didn’t wait long to put you out of your misery. The bread had just arrived at the table when he said, “So rumor says you’re with one of our interns.”

A 21-year-old kid named Chad, of all fucking things. “Does it?” you said.

“It’d be nice to hear an answer.”

“You know the fucking answer.”

“That hurts to hear, from you.”

You were caught off guard. You thought he’d be pissed, but he just looked sad. You took a swallow of wine—too long, you’d nearly drained the damn glass. “It doesn’t,” you started. “Mean anything. It’s fucking nothing.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“I—” Jesus christ. You were clenching the handle of your fork so hard that you found its imprints in your palms hours later. You wanted to leap to your feet and shout at him, or maybe hurl your steak knife into his chest. How the fuck were you supposed to answer that? As if you knew what was wrong with yourself! All the infinite ways you were fucked!

“I don’t fucking know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t, okay? I just, I.” You forced your hands open on the tablecloth, as pale as the fabric beneath them. “It has to be like this. With me.”

“And what if I wanted to marry you?”

You stared. “You’re not fucking asking me to get fucking married.”

“No,” he agreed. “But someday someone will. Because you’re—”

“Oh, don’t fucking say ‘because I’m a good guy’, Laird, bullshit. Fuck off.”

“I think you’re just a guy, Mello. With some good and bad characteristics.”

“Cut the shit. Let’s get to the fucking point. What happens now?”

“That depends. Are you going to stop fucking the interns?”

You held back a wince. Laird never cursed.

In the end, you didn’t have to say a word. He just looked at you, and then he said, “Then we’re done. Sorry things didn’t work out. I’ll pick up the tab.”

You were so fucking thunderstruck you thought you’d misheard. Without a tear or a fight? Done, with polite indoor voices at fucking Marlowe at 9 o’clock?

“That’s it?”

“That’s it, darling.” He smiled wanly at you. “Even you can’t come up with a compromise to win this one, I think.”

()

“Oh, god.”

“Don’t fucking laugh at me.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s fucking horrible, Mel, christ. Fucking Chad.”

“Don’t—”

“Chad!”

“Shut the fuck up, will you?”

After his laughter tapers off, he says, “Mel, don’t get mad at me, okay. Why do you fuck so many people?”

You get angry immediately, of course. Face and neck hot, violent with blood. Finally, once you can hear over the pulse in your ears, you say, “It’s good to have a backup plan. You know. Options on the table.”

“Okay… except that’s not how this works. You don’t get to have options. If shit falls through, it falls through. You just have to suck it up.”

“I don’t want to fucking suck it up.”

“Nobody does, dude. But, like, what the fuck do you think people are going to do to you? What do you even need backup plans for?”

Your throat locks up so tight you think you feel a bone shift. You can’t answer that question. You can’t.

Matt sighs. “It makes you feel better, huh? Like having backup plans, or whatever.”

Tiny nod. You can admit that one.

“But honestly, dude, I wish you hadn’t had them with me. Like I think it was bad for me. For us, I guess.”

You can’t stop yourself from retorting, “You shooting junk was bad for us.”

“Yeah, but I’m fucking trying to change that, Mel, aren’t I? And what’ve you changed?”

“Did I need to fucking change for somebody?”

“Jesus christ. I came here for my 100 days, okay? I didn’t want a stupid chip or medallion or whatever, I just wanted to be here with you. And I’d be down to stay in New York for a while, if you could just stop being an asshole about it. Like I’ve hardly even seen anything yet. I at least wanna go to the Statue of Liberty.”

“That’s a complete fucking tourist trap.”

“Whatever, I’m still going. I want an I-heart-New-York lighter too.”

“.... Did you really do a hundred days?”

“A hundred sixteen shitty, shitty days. So suck on that.”

()

You take him to the Statue of Liberty; the Empire State and the Met, too. He is lukewarm about the sights, baffled by the lack of freeways. On the subway he demonstrates poor pole etiquette and worse balance, decking fellow passengers with his 6-2 frame like pins with a bowling ball until you manage to corral him against a wall.

“This is insane. There’s so many fucking people.”

“This isn’t even rush hour.”

“You do this every day?”

“I mainly take taxis.”

By nighttime he seems like a well-bruised apple. Concussed by contact with too many people without the shield of a chassis and tinted windshield. He absolutely refuses to go out anywhere for dinner, drags you both home, where he hides in your bedroom, noodling around on his Gameboy and ignoring you. Decompressing.

In the single photo you guys took, on the observation deck of the Empire State, he is pressed into your shoulder like a clam to its rock. Smiling with his mouth but not his eyes, tilting away from the bodies of strangers.

He really is only here for you.

From the bedroom, you hear his alarm go off. Matt is out cold on your bed. He twitches and starts when you shake him awake.

“Oh,” he says blearily, reaching past you for a pill bottle. “I was having a dream.”

“About?”

“You being married.” He fiddles with its cap. “It was a bad dream, I guess.”

You used to check his hands when he’d pull up at the airport. Someday, you thought, that finger wouldn’t be empty.

“Do you have to take those right now?” you ask. “We have your leftovers, if you’re hungry.”

“I could eat.”

At the kitchen counter, he sits too close to you, knocking his un-ringed left hand into yours.

“This is pretty good.”

“I told you. You did a good job.”

He smiles at you. “Thanks.”

There’s all kinds of questions you want to ask him. Are you staying in New York? Am I coming back to L.A.? Do you want me to come back? What are we? Is there even a we left to dredge out from where you and I buried one another?

Also, are you going to keep dying your hair? I liked it better red.

You save it. He looks happy eating. Leave him alone, for now. There’ll be time.

Like that, the hundred-seventeenth day draws to its close.


End file.
